Membership of the Order of Malta is a call to holiness - to personal sanctification through the service of the poor and sick – ‘Tuitio Fidei et Obsequium Pauperum’. As with other religious orders we number among our past members men and women who have lived up to this vocation in their lives and service, and are thereby both a proof of its truth and a rallying call to those of us who come after them.

Several of these holy men and women are honoured at our altars, and Masses for them are contained in the Missal published especially for the Order. More are known only locally, and countless more to God alone. These we honour on the feast of All Saints of the Order, amongst whom we may believe are hundreds of very ordinary members who by small acts have risen above the ordinary, yet whose lives reflect our own. Each member of the Order should strive to die amongst them.

A study of the Order’s Missal will reveal some interesting facts. Of the fourteen saints' feasts contained with it, (excluding St John the Baptist and Our Lady) four are women, all four canonised, so one third in an Order perceived as one of Knights, of men. Of the men, most joyfully for our Grand Priory, two of the martyrs are English, one fifth of the total.

St John the Baptist is celebrated twice, only of only two saints in the Church, with Our Lady, to have this honour: his day of Heavenly birthday (martyrdom) and his earthy nativity. We keep too the dedication of his church in Valetta, which is also kept as the feast for all unconsecrated churches of the Order around the world, including our own in St John’s Wood.

Our Lady has two feasts particular to Our Order: her Nativity, kept under the title of Our Lady of Philermo, the icon from Rhodes which is amongst our greatest treasures, when we commemorate the victory in the Siege of Malta as the 'Victory Mass'; and also as Our Lady of Liesse, Cause of Our Joy, after the shrine in Grand Harbour, Valetta, a miraculous devotion brought by knights to the island from Northern France.